


Negative Slave

by lone



Series: Negative Slave [1]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-09-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 15:18:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/479911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lone/pseuds/lone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After following Commissioner Gordon down into the sewers, rookie cop John Blake finds that he's bitten off a whole lot more than he can chew. Imprisoned by Bane, John begins to question where the line is drawn between cop and thug. He used to have such a black and white image of what that dichotomy was, but now he's not so sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for any errors. Not beta'd. Please leave some feedback if you can!

_“_ _The phrase "negative slave" seems incredibly powerful to me. Each are power words that carry their own weight. The phrase can go both ways... meaning an actual slave that is negative, a person under full control of the mind and body, OR it can be taken as the opposite, the "negative" of the slave. Meaning someone who is free from control.”_   **-Travis Egedy of Pictureplane**

  
When the call comes in through the radio that they’d found the Congressman’s location, John immediately knows something seems different. Tonight, things were going to change; he could feel it in his bones. It’s a sixth sense sort of thing that the young cop can’t explain, but it swims up through his throat and catches at the back of his mouth as he takes a left on Rotunda Ave and comes to a screeching halt in front of Old Charlie’s where they’d gotten the tip. There’s sirens, gunshots, and chaos in the humid Gotham night, and it’s only 9PM! He’s not quite sure how he gracefully climbs from his Crown Victoria with his slightly lanky legs (the captain is always saying he’s way too skinny) and wields himself with his pistol as if he’s been doing this sort of thing every night.   
  
Being a rookie, he hasn’t seen much action, and with Gotham currently in a somewhat peaceful existence, thanks to the Harvey Dent Act, there’s not to be anymore of those crazy days when mad men blew up hospitals and the Batman watched over the city. John still craves a bit of action, but there’s the fear of being killed, or seeing a comrade killed in front of him that makes him wish for another boring night of patrolling.   
  
He immediately follows the gunfire into the well lit alleyway, catching a glimpse of Commissioner Gordon racing around the corner of a building with several other officers. The air has a slight chill, but John finds it has nothing to do with the temperature. He doubles down and breaks into an all out sprint before a few missed bullets convince him to take cover behind a garbage dumpster. John’s scared shitless, but he’s trained for these sort of situations. Being afraid is what makes him feel the most alive and it’s also when he’s able to shoot his best. He picks off a few thugs that seem a lot better at shooting than the average. He hasn’t killed anyone in quite sometime, but he can’t afford the moment to absorb what he’s just done, nor can he hear his thoughts over the sound of his own heart bouncing in his chest. Once clear, John and his fellow officers advance down the alleyway, pushing their enemy further back.  
  
Gordon and few of his men seem to have a lead on the men they’re chasing, whoever they are, and in the most unlikeliest of places, the commissioner is sure that the group has gone down a manhole. Gordon’s the type of man you would follow into a burning building set to explode in seconds and still feel confident that you’d make it out alive. John Blake considers the commissioner a hero. Every cop should feel the same after Gordon cleaned the mess that the Joker and the Batman left behind.   
  
“They’re down here! Quick, help me lift this!” Gordon shouts, another officer already finding a pole nearby to lift the heavy manhole cover away. Commissioner Gordon orders a few officers to the other side of the buildings where the sewers start their drainage into the Gotham River, hopefully to cut off the group in pursuit in case they escaped that way. John follows the man down into the manhole and holds his breath as the pungent stench of the Gotham Sewer System overtakes him.   
  
The iron ladder on the way down feels damp and slippery, so John takes his time. Once they reach the bottom, he follows the Commissioner with his gun drawn and his flashlight held up beside his pistol. A few more officers join them on the way down.   
  
“Did you see them come down here, sir?” John whispers, walking forward carefully. His fingers are slippery on the trigger, but he focuses; scared, but brave.  
  
“No, but men just don’t just disappear in dead end alleys,” Gordon replies.   
  
John’s never been down in the sewers, but he knows there’s much more than rats and shit down here. In recent months he’s heard talk of a man with a mask, someone named Bane. According to the bit of street gossip John has overheard from the other cops, he’s the one that has been recruiting drifters and burnouts down into the underground. They say he’s a monster, big and dangerous with scaly green skin. It all could be silly rumors -- just another one of Gotham’s urban myths, like the crocodile man, or the man made of clay, but then again Gotham has a way of unearthing the strangest of creatures.   
  
A shot rings out behind them, and just as John turns to face the sound an explosion erupts and the blast sends him crashing painfully to the wet floor, the heat against his face and neck. He languishes on the ground, his left arm in dull pain, but not broken. His ears ring and he’s left slightly confused and dizzy. He distantly feels the Commissioner’s hands upon him, helping him up to his wobbly feet.   
  
“Can you stand, rookie?” Gordon asks, his voice desperate and breathy just as more shots ring out. John and Gordon throw themselves behind a wall for cover. The young cop fumbles for his gun, but realizes he’d lost both his pistol and flashlight during the blast. He turns to face Gordon when suddenly something hits him in the head from behind and bright lights behind his eyes blind him. He only remembers Gordon’s frightened face as the young cop falls back to the ground and blacks out.   
  
/  
  
John awakes in the arms of two men carrying him down a dark path. He can’t quite make out anything in his blurry vision, but he can hear the sewer water moving and the men speaking in a foreign tongue that he can’t place. By the time John arrives to the underground lair he’s still a bit delirious and confused. Overhead a waterfall loudly cascades, waking John up a bit more. Bright lights shine upon his face and he ducks away to shield his eyes. They dump him on the hard concrete ground, moist and sticky. It smells something awful down here, and barely squeaking through the waterfall’s wall of sound are the squeals of rats and the murmuring of men. A voice comes that sounds artificial and almost far away, but it’s close and chilling. Someone is shot and supposedly dumped down into the waterfall nearby. John dares to look up from his place on the ground and wishes he’d never followed Gordon down here.  
  
Bane stands above him several feet away, huge and intimidating with eyes curious and intelligent, but deadly all the same. He’s bald with an apparatus clinging to his face like an extension of itself. The tool is snug against his face, metal tubes that look almost like rounded angler fish teeth built into the front. There are small holes in the center that simulate a speaker box, probably where the man breathes and speaks through. He’s shirtless and wet from either sweat or the moisture in the air. John notices that he’s not scaly, or green, but that he looked normal enough... aside from the mask and muscles. Him, along with the rest of his men are dressed in ragged military gear; baggy, dark green cargo pants, and heavy brown boots that could probably plow their way right through John’s skull with ease. John prays this isn’t the night he dies. He always envisioned dying in a heroic way.   
  
“And who is this?” Bane’s voice comes again in that strange artificial sound that almost sends John’s face back to the ground in terror, but John’s a bit braver than he lets on -- he stares Bane down, which probably is amusing to the bigger man, though it never shows in his eyes. There’s a whiff of an accent, but John’s too damned scared at the moment to figure out where from.   
  
“We don’t know. He came with Gordon,” answers one of Bane’s lackeys, his voice shaking like rafters in a strong wind. It’s as if he’s as frightened as John. The officer steals a glance at their lair and doesn’t spot the commissioner. His stomach clenches as he fears the worst.   
  
“Since when do GCPD not wear name tags?” Bane’s intonation is strange, making his speech pattern peculiar. There’s a frustration behind the man’s words, like an adult attempting to explain to a child that there’s no monsters under the bed. But down here, there certainly are.  
  
Before the men can search the front of his uniform, John blurts out his name bitterly to save himself the humiliation. He looks up into Bane’s eyes defiantly, trying to ignore the shiver that shoots up his spine like lightning when Bane’s eyes widen for a split second. As long as John doesn’t act scared, he’ll never give Bane the pleasure of knowing just how fucking afraid he is.   
  
“Lift him,” strains Bane’s voice, wheezing a bit.   
  
Strong arms roughly lift him up and he’s close to the masked man.   
  
“Higher, so that I may be at eye level!”   
  
They lift him up until he’s face to face with Bane, his feet several inches from the ground. Bane smells of gunpowder and motor oil. John stares him in the eye, noticing the green in them as they shine in the low light. John’s eyes lower to the apparatus on his face, able to fully study it for the quickest of seconds. The mask around his bald head is a icy blue steel color, but the mechanism covering his nose and mouth are grey with complex tubing that seem to pump something through to the man’s airways. John feels Bane’s breath softly wheeze from the center of the mask and it smells of novocaine -- metallic and sharp.   
  
Bane’s eyes linger on John and something flashes across the hard stare, softening for a split second that only John catches, and if anyone else had, they wouldn’t dare say a thing. Bane looks down at John’s name tag, reaching forward with meaty fingers, slowly, and deliberately scanning the letters J-O-H-N-B-L-A-K-E with his thumb before ripping the name tag away, as well as his badge, tossing them both into the current. Wide eyed, John watches as the two items fling across the room into the water. Bane then snatches his radio away and stomps it to pieces below him. John swallows.   
  
“Lock him away for now. He may yet serve us a purpose,” Bane says without looking away from the young policeman, his eyes mean and shiny.   
  
“Where’s Commissioner Gordon?” John yells as the men pull him away.   
  
“Presumably drowned somewhere along Gotham River.” There’s a twinge of amusement in his voice that makes John sick to his stomach.   
  
Bane sends him away to a dark corner, binding his arms above his head with his own handcuffs to a metal pipe that he can’t see in the darkness. They strip him of his uniform, forcing a filthy pair of jeans on him and a dingy white t-shirt that smells like cardboard and dirty socks. The corner is pitch black and rat infested, but John doesn’t complain. He suffers in silence while thinking of a way out this first night.   
  
In the darkness John has little to do but think, and shiver from coldness, but even his thoughts become too loud. In the distance he can hear the cascading water and every so often he hears screams and gunshots. Several times one of Bane’s men comes to check up on him and John feigns sleep. The last time he fakes it, he actually tries to find rest after giving up on figuring out how to escape. The only thing he can hope for now is for his fellow policemen to find him.    
  
He awakes hours later with dull pain biting at his wrists and shoulders, but there’s a plate of food beside him and he’s no longer in darkness; An old rusty lamp shines dimly on the floor, affording him a meager offering of light. The guard notices him stirring awake and immediately tries to force John’s mouth open and feed him, but being the stubborn little shit that John is, he spits the food out into the man’s face, telling him to fuck off. John braces himself for the punch to come, but it never does. The guard shuts the lamp off with a blank expression, abandoning John and the food on the ground, not returning for quite some time.   
  
The man tries again to make John eat hours later, but the young cop refuses. The guard doesn’t try again, but he maintains his rounds, checking in on John every twenty minutes or so.    
  
John feels as if two nights have passed when he wakes up after one of his naps. The cop’s not been able to sleep more than an hour at a time. His wrist  feel  raw and sore, as does his buttocks that sit against the hard concrete underneath him. John’s stomach pains him dully, much like his boredom and hopelessness. How can he escape? He’s thought of several scenarios, but nothing seems feasible. He’s tried slipping out of his handcuffs, but they’d put them on pretty tight. A few times he’s pulled  at  the pipe he’s bound to, but whenever he makes a  noise a guard is on him like flies on shit. The only way out is to talk to Bane -- strike a deal and maybe it’d all  work  out in the end. John knows he’s being delusional, but it’s all he’s got.    
  
His guard finally arrives after a day or so (John can’t tell how long it’s been anymore) with a box of food in his hands after giving up on feeding John. The man places it beside the uneaten and now rotten meal from before.   
  
“Bane says that the next time you waste food, he’ll starve you to death instead of for a few days.” The voice is Russian accented and sounds like tires over a dirt road as he unearths a carton of milk and a grey-ish brown water canteen from the satchel against his thigh. “This time, you eat.” He sets the milk and water down and lifts the small box of food.   
  
“What does Bane want from me?” John blurts out, willing himself to fight through the hunger pangs.   
  
The man looks at him, his eyes brown and wide, but empty. He grins in a distant sort of way and his eyes shine with a dangerous edge, “Just be glad he hasn’t killed you yet. Now eat.”   
  
John’s eyes peer through the dim light into the box and sees what seems to be green beans mixed with cornmeal and a corner of brown gravy. The blandest dinner ever, but he’s grown way too hungry since his strike before. He’s not sure if he can wait until later to yield.   
  
“You tell Bane that he doesn’t have much time. Kidnapping one of Gotham’s finest doesn’t go unnoticed,” is what John says instead of cooperating.   
  
“Eat.” The man ignores him, dipping a beat up aluminum spoon into the dish, pushing it towards the officer’s mouth.   
  
John wants to turn away, but instead his mouth opens, greedily swallowing the lukewarm food. It takes like he thinks paper must tastes like, but he continues to let the man feed him until John’s had his fill. After the man feeds him his carton of milk and once John has drained the canteen, the guard leaves him, but leaves the lamp on. The young cop feels a bit disgusted by how grateful he is for the light, but damn, it gives him hope for some reason.  
  
The cold stops him from sleeping now. It has notably gotten colder these nights and even though he complains to the guard, the man never pays much attention to him. He begins to give up on hoping for a blanket when Bane comes to him one day with a set of thick blankets in his arms.   
  
“Bane!” John cried out, feeling his heart flip with joy and hope. “Bane, please you have to stop this!”   
  
The man says nothing, barely even looks at him. He unwraps the blankets and gently wraps them around John, stilling for a second to stare into the young man’s eyes.   
  
“Bane, you’ve got to let me go! They’ll come looking for me and smoke this place out. Please!”   
  
Bane turns and walks away without a single word.  
  
He guesses that the guards change because a different man comes in the next day in what feels like early morning. In this dark and without a watch John has no sense of time, or how much of it has passed. The young policeman can’t make out much in the thick darkness beyond the short range of his lamp, but he can tell that his new guard is tall and muscular, but significantly smaller than Bane. He’s probably more dangerous than John’s previous guard, but it doesn’t stop the young man from antagonizing him. He has to get out of here, and it seems the only way to get out is to get Bane’s attention.   
  
“Why do you follow a madman in the sewers like rats?” John asks the guard when he arrives for his usual rounds.   
  
The man stands in the darkness for some time, unmoving and silent until he slowly strides over to step into the low light, revealing a dark skinned face covered in ratty red cloth, with two greedy coal eyes peering at John.   
  
John waits for an answer, but awkwardly the guard just stares at him without saying a word. He shifts under the tall man’s gaze, suddenly not liking the way the black eyes scan his body, drinking him in hungrily.   
  
“Get Bane. I want to speak to him,” John huffs out, his eyes darting around his surroundings, instinctively searching for an escape route, although he knows there’s no way he can.   
  
The guard chuckles, walking forward in huge boots with steps that land like mini earthquakes. John’s skin tightens and he swallows, his sore arms beginning to shake as the man advances on him, now almost flush against him. The man’s crotch is briefly in his face, but before John can protest, the guard stoops down to him, their faces close. The man smells rancid like he’s been dumpster diving. John himself doesn’t smell all that good after not having a shower in days, but this guy smells all kinds of awful that John doesn’t think himself capable of.   
  
“I see why Bane is so fond of you,” the man says, a smile to his voice.   
  
“And why is that?” John sort of wishes he hadn’t asked.   
  
“I think you know why,” the guard says with a weak sense of humor and sexual innuendo. “Now,” the man stands up, placing his hands on his crotch, cupping it. “We’re not allowed to fuck you, but Bane never said anything about not being able to look at you.”   
  
John’s throat tightens and it feels like his mouth has been filled with cement. He somehow is able to croak, “What are you talking about?”   
  
The guard unzips his pants, his penis flopping out. John turns his head away in disgust, breathing harshly through his nose.   
  
“If you try anything, I’ll scream!” John hissed, his eyes closed and his body tense.   
  
The guard laughs, “For who?”  
  
“For Bane, you piece of shit!”   
  
“Bane’s not here, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your fucking mouth shut!” The guard covers John’s mouth with his hand roughly and slams the cop’s head against the pipes. White hot pain waves over his head, sending him into a dizzy spinning as struggles against the guard’s hand. He’s aware enough though bite with furious rage at the fatty flesh between the man’s thumb and his index finger. The guard cries out in pain, ripping his hand away before placing a powerful punch to John’s stomach, knocking all of the air from his lungs. The pain is thick on him as he hunches over, attempting to cry out, but only gives a pathetic, airless huff.   
  
“I’m bleeding, you fuck!” The man kicks John in his stomach, causing him to arch his back as he rides the pain and waits for the next blow. “If you try to pull anything else, I’ll kill you and say that you attacked me,” the guard spits, his tone angry and rough. He places the barrel of his pistol against John’s head and reaches down at the youth’s trousers, forcing them down to his ankles.   
  
John lifts his head and stares venom at the man standing before him that strokes his thick cock that smells like sour garbage. The odor is thick and makes John gag.   
  
“You’re fucking pathetic!” the guard says, “Turn around, I can’t stand to look at your face.” The man twists the officer around so that his backside faces him and the handcuffs painfully twist against the tender flesh of his wrists. “Stand up!” John shifts up to stand on his legs and feels them wobble. He’d become weak from sitting down for so long. The man behind him pushes the gun against the back of his head and worked himself, hissing in pleasure from the view of John’s ass on full display.   
  
John feels disgusting, and his stomach twists and flips as the man’s moans get more breathy and desperate. Soon, it’d be over. That’s all that keeps John from crying out for help. He holds tighter to the pipe he’s handcuffed to for support when the man grinds the gun a bit harder against his skull. The guard places his free hand on John’s left side and urges him down.   
  
“I want you to squat,” the guard says harshly, pressing down now with force on John’s hips. The young man does as asked and keeps the bitter insults that are forming in his head to himself. The guard shifts away and pulls the lamp closer until it is directly near John’s ass, shining light on his puckering hole, pink and tight with a bit of hair surrounding it. He presses down on John’s back, making him arch so that his end sets higher up.   
  
“Fuck, yes!” the guard grinds out, fisting his cock harder, jerking like his life depends on it.   
  
John’s not a crier. He’s never had the chance to be one really, with growing up in orphanages where kids faced adult problems way too early. He’d always considered himself the lucky one, especially when it came to sexual abuse, because so many of his friends had their innocence taken away from them by force. You could always tell when one of them had been plucked. He thought he knew how it must have been, but he had no idea. He thinks he’s beginning to get it.  What it feels like to seem worthless and objectified. He can’t help but silently cry when the man behind him is caressing his ass, grunting and blowing hot hair against his back.   
  
He retches when the guard is flush against him and the bastard is shooting his seed in the air, roping itself on the young man’s back. John’s legs go weak and he falls to his knees and his body shudders as he takes in what’s actually just happened. The guard chuckles, flinging a few droplets of come on John’s back before zipping his pants and turning off the lamp.   
  
“Do turn the light back on Miguel,” comes what can only be Bane’s voice.   
  
John stops crying right away and stills himself, not sure if he’s dreaming or if this is indeed real life.   
  
“Bane...,” says the guard in disbelief, his voice small and worried.   
  
“Turn the light on so that we may see what you were doing to Mr. Blake just now,” Bane’s voice is scary and serious, yet John finds himself wanting to celebrate.   
  
The light flickers on and John ducks his head, his arms long and sore as he attempts to lift himself.   
  
“Do not move Officer Blake. I want to see it all,” Bane says, walking forward with even steps.   
  
“I didn’t fuck him Bane. I swear!” says Miguel, shaking and terrified.   
  
“No, but you’ve done other things.”   
  
John lets out a small sigh when Bane’s large hands are on his chin, gently urging him to turn his face. He doesn’t expect the kindness in the man’s eyes. It’s so sudden and surprising that the cop’s mouth opens slightly to gape.   
  
“Are you hurt Officer Blake?” Bane asks, his eyes searching him.   
  
John shakes his head, pulling away from Bane’s touch. “No. I’m not.” That statement is not 100% the truth however. There’s no physical pain, but his pride definitely has taken a beating.   
  
Bane’s eyes skate over the man’s slender body and he sees the mess Miguel made. He stands there, thinking, then turns to Miguel who looks ready to shit his pants at any moment.   
  
“Take Mr. Blake to to showers and clean him. In ten minutes I want him and yourself front and center. There’s a lesson to be made in this and I intend to set an example.” Bane walks away cooly without giving either of them a look.   
  
Miguel angrily unfastens John’s cuffs and leads him to a room where there’s a makeshift shower head with boxes of bathing supplies. The water is cold and unpleasant and Miguel’s frantic wiping reddens his skin. He’s in and out in what seems like seconds. His guard thrusts new clothes at him and he slowly pulls them on, privately thankful for a clean body and clean clothes. Once he’s changed, Miguel yanks him around by the arm until they are back where he’d first seen Bane. There’s the booming sound of the waterfall and there are dozens of armored men with guns, standing around. Bane sits on the edge of his bed, waiting for them with his arms crossed. When he sees them arrive, he stands.   
  
“So glad you could join us Mr. Blake. Miguel,” Bane says, his eyes icy and distant.   
  
“Here he is Bane. I did as you asked,” Miguel responds, his voice shaky.   
  
“Yes. Yes you have. But you disobeyed me before and now a lesson still must be taught.”   
  
“Bane... please, I didn’t do anything to him!”   
  
“Bullshit!” John hisses, attempting to pull away from the man’s grip, but Miguel proves too strong. “Let me go, scum!” John struggles against him and with one look from Bane, Miguel lets him free.   
  
Bane steps towards him, his arms thick by his sides. “Officer Blake. Down here we have rules. And the rules are that my men obey my every word. Whenever they go against that word, they jeopardize everything.”   
  
“The fire rises!” calls out one of the men, and the rest of them murmur the same phrase in unison.   
  
John looks around at all of them, catching their sneering faces. “What the hell does that mean?”   
  
Bane says nothing, just steps close to the waterfall where the men have circled around. “Miguel... step here.” Bane points to the ground in front of him.   
  
The man hesitates at first, but quickly steps forward.   
  
“The gun,” Bane says, holding out his hand.   
  
Miguel hands his rifle over and sighs, his eyes glassy and scared. Bane holds the gun, looking down at it for a moment.   
  
“This man,” Bane begins, finally looking up at Miguel. “Has gone against my direct order to not harm Officer John Blake in any way. You were ordered not to touch, not to fondle, not to fuck, not to do anything other that guard the man. But Miguel here chose to disobey... and now, as a result of his insubordination, he will die in front of you all to set an example for how terribly important it is to obey my every command.”   
  
“Bane! Please!” Miguel yells out.   
  
John feels a lump in his throat, not sure if he should be happy or not for what’s about to happen. The man deserved to be locked behind bars, but to be killed like this... John’s not so sure. But there’s the part of him that almost wants his blood -- the part of him that felt disgusting when Miguel made him strip.   
  
Bane tosses the gun over to a nearby lackey and in a swiftness that John has never seen, he grabs Miguel by the shoulders with two meaty hands, ripping off his scarf to reveal a war weathered man with dark skin and tiny black eyes that were wide in fear. Bane pauses for one insane moment and then thrusts his head forward, colliding with the man’s face. Miguel cries out in agony, but then Bane does it again. And then again. And again until the man’s skull sinks in and there’s blood all over Bane’s face. Bane drops the man’s body like it’s a piece of trash and then scans around at everyone with an intense ferocity as if to see if the lesson has sunken into their heads.    
  
The room is dead silent, aside from the loud waterfall. John feels his stomach churn at the sight of Miguel’s sunken in face. He’s barely even recognizable. Blake’s never seen a man’s face cave in like that; it’s completely unreal. Bane quickly orders someone to dispose of the body and silently Bane leads John over to his bed and throws him on the floor.   
  
Confused, John swiftly turns to face Bane, his hands on the dusty floor. “What the hell do you want from me?” Bane ignores him, only handcuffs him to the side of the bed.  
  
“At least tell me what you’re planning to do with me!” John cries out, but it falls on deaf ears. Bane walks away and soon the area is empty. He’s left only to his thoughts and the sound of the water crashing.   
  
Surprisingly he falls asleep faster than he ever managed to in that dark corner. He only wakes up when he feels the tiny feet of a rat scurry over his foot. It’s freezing cold and the lights are no longer on. There’s a soft snoring sound coming from above that John barely catches over the booming waterfall nearby. He shifts up on his elbows until he’s able to sit up. In the darkness he can see the outline of Bane’s bulky shoulders. He watches for a moment and then lays back down on the cold cement floor, willing himself back to sleep.   
  
He stays there for an hour it feels like, but it’s simply too cold for him to find any rest. He remembers his blanket from before and wishes for it back. After another hour of suffering through his chills, he decides to do what he really doesn’t want to do and that’s wake Bane. John gets to his knees and calls out Bane’s name. He waits with his heart pounding in his chest, completely terrified by what might happen. The man doesn’t answer, so John calls his name again, this time shaking the bed a bit.   
  
Bane awakes with a heavy sigh, turning to face John.   
  
“Officer Blake,” comes Bane’s voice, eerily even.   
  
“I’m cold and there’s rats crawling over me,” John spits out, left breathless from his own terror.   
  
“You’re my prisoner. What makes you think I care for your comfort?”   
  
“I’m... I’m cold. I just want that blanket you gave me befo-”  
  
“What makes you think that you can break me from my slumber to demand blankets and comfort?” Bane’s voice comes through the speaker holes of his mask and it chills John into silence. Bane only waits a few pauses before shifting from his bed and reaching down to John. Much to the young cop’s dismay, Bane covers his face harshly with one wide open hand, squeezing it painfully. John cries out, reaching to pull the hand away, only to remember his bindings holding him back. Bane’s hand smothers his screams, and the terror continues as John feels the man’s bare feet touch the ground.   
  
“My men and I lie awake in the night with terrors and once we do find the rare chance for true rest our dreams are not of family and joyous times, no not like the dreams you have -- they are shrouded in the madness that created us.” Bane squeezes harder and John begins to accept that this is the moment he will die. Tears are in his eyes and his mouth is warm against Bane’s cool, painful hand. It seems as if his head might explode and he only welcomes it, if only to stop the pain. Bane leans down to John who continues to scream and struggle, kicking his feet about as if they could do anything to stop the bigger man from completely destroying him. Bane lessens the grip and his mask is nearly snug against John’s face.   
  
“Do you have nightmares Officer Blake?” Bane asks in a nonchalant manner that hits John like another blow to the head. He finally moves his hand away.   
  
John manages to struggle out a “No,” that causes Bane to sigh, sending out a small wheezing, hot breeze against John’s face. Bane rises to his feet and fetches the handcuff key.   
  
“Do you know why I’m keeping you here, officer?” Bane questions as he unlocks the handcuffs, the clicking sound of the lock giving way is like music to John’s ears.   
  
“No,” John breathes out, his eyes on Bane’s poorly lit face, only really seeing his outline, though his eyes somehow make it through the darkness, looking into him like a terrible beast.   
  
“The truth is Mr. Blake,” Bane lifts him up from the floor like he’s bag of flour and plops him on the bed. “I could have killed you as soon as you were brought down here with the commissioner. In fact, that would have been the most logically sound choice.”   
  
“Then why didn’t you?” The way John says it, it’s almost as if he wishes Bane  _had_ killed him right then.   
  
Bane stands there, his body massive and visible even in the darkness. The man doesn’t say anything at first, just stands there considering John as the police officer lays on his back, unmoving. Finally he moves to flick on a light. It’s low and golden against John’s skin, but still bright enough to make him squint until his eyes adjusts. Bane looms near the bed, just staring, his eyes all over John’s body like a slow moving snake. His shoulders seem even more massive now, and his arms are bulging and veiny as if he’d just finished working out.   
  
“I didn’t kill you,” Bane begins as he unbuckles his belt glacially slow, “because you’re simply too beautiful to waste.”   
  
John’s mouth flies open in protest, but it’s all too late; not that if he asks Bane to stop the bigger man would. Swiftly, Bane’s trousers are pulled down to his ankles and he kneels on the bed. The mattress sinks under the large man’s weight and suddenly John is hot with a surprising rush of excitement, lust, and disgust and fear all at once. He can’t decide which one he feels the most of. It comes in a fluid sort of way; right now for instance, it’s fear when Bane roughly pulls him close by his arm, forcing him to straddle the huge man, but then there’s excitement (or is it lust?) when Bane’s erection is stiff against John’s inner thigh, something the officer takes note of by staring down at it. Seeing the other man’s sex makes John feel like there’s a block of lead sitting in his stomach.   
  
Bane’s eyes soften and gaze down to John’s thin pouty lips and the cop can tell Bane longs to kiss them, but there’s no way that it’s possible. His eyes jerkily move up to John’s own, staring into them for a moment before turning him over and throwing him back onto the bed on his stomach. Bane pulls John’s trousers away roughly, then yanks the man’s shirt over his head; John hears the shirt rip and his cock shamefully stirs in delight.    
  
Bane tosses the shirt onto the ground and pauses, taking a moment to devour John’s nudity, watching the back muscles move as the young cop squirms underneath him. Smooth creamy skin is under his touch and John lets out a gasp. Bane says nothing the whole time, but slides his calloused digits up and down the man’s back. He moves downward and takes both buttocks in his hands, squeezing and rolling them. Bane’s breathing is labored, wheezing through the mask as he spreads the cheeks apart to reveal John’s puckering rosebud. His cock stiffens at the sight and then there’s no stopping him. Bane’s atop of John, ignoring his cries when he pushes the mushroom tip of his cock against the tight opening.   
  
“Please,” John gasps, biting down on his bottom lip when Bane breaks through his sphincter briefly; the white searing pain along his ringed entrance catches him off guard. He wants to say stop. The words are right there in his throat and it’d take little to no effort to push out that last word, but he doesn’t.   
  
He doesn’t even want to begin to consider why he doesn’t.   
  
“You’re quite sealed off Mr. Blake,” comes Bane’s strained voice, his breathing violent against the mask. Above John, Bane hooks his left arm under the man and forces him up on his knees and elbows to lift his chest off the bed. “Aid us,” Bane says, cupping his hand, moving it under John’s mouth.   
  
John finally faces the situation when his cock is full of blood and he’s actually shivering from hot desire. This. Cannot happen.   
  
“Please, Bane. You don’t have to do th--” John pleads; fear freezes him when he turns to the mask and remembers the way it slammed into Miguel’s face. He can even see specks of blood still on it where Bane must have neglected to clean. He shivers at the memory of how the man’s face caved in like a hammered pumpkin. All that blood... and how sick his stomach turned when the man gave out one last pathetic whimper, falling to the floor like a sack of sand. Bane terrifies him -- repulses him even, but right now that fear, knowing that Bane could smash his skull like it were a chicken egg, it all just turns him inside out with bleeding sexual need.    
  
There. He’s admitted it and now that he can admit it to himself privately, just for this moment he forgets that he’s a cop, he forgets that he’s a hostage. All he wants to do is play along. He spits into Bane’s hand and ducks his head when the masked man’s thick fingers are on his hole, spreading his saliva there before dipping his index finger in. John arches his back and hates himself for cooing in pleasure when Bane goes a bit deeper. The intrusion stings, but John’s not a newcomer to this kind of activity. It’s the first time he’s done it with a masked man in the sewers though, that’s something he can say he’s never done.   
  
Bane’s eyes are wild as John stares back at him, watching his arm shimmy back and forth as he fingers the cop’s ass. Suddenly, it’s as if something snaps in Bane and the man is atop him, pushing his head into the scratchy blanket. John screams, but it’s all muffled by the mattress when Bane plunges into him, stretching his hole to the point of ripping. The pain is sharp and warm, throbbing as Bane ravages his entrance with animal-like thrusts. Bane pushes John’s head further in the mattress and the coil springs bite at the man’s face.   
  
The cop realizes he can’t breathe, so he tries to shift from under Bane’s powerful hand, but it’s no use. It’s as if Bane’s hand is made of cement, there’s no way it would yield. John collapses onto his stomach and turns his head as fast as he can and sweet cool air is in his lungs finally. He cries out when Bane sinks further into him, pushing all of his weight on John as he plummets deeper and deeper until he’s down to the hilt, only to draw back and repeat the motion again. John doesn’t know how to react to what’s happening. He screams out in pain, in frustration, in terror, but then he moans because because, fuck, it feels so great, but he doesn’t want it to feel great. He’s being taken by force -- this isn’t suppose to feel so good, but fuck all it does!   
  
Bane grunts through his mask as he places an open hand on John’s back and uses the other to caress the man’s sides. He fucks John’s into pieces and doesn’t look back, never slowing down, never asking how John’s doing. He just needs his release and there’s no stopping that from happening, not even the tears that the young officer is crying. John is so tight and hot that even if Bane wants to stop, he can’t; the way it draws him in is like a drug, it’s simply addictive. The sweet friction of his hole weakens Bane’s legs and then he’s laying atop the other man, fucking him harder and faster.   
  
John just lays there, not wanting to move, just wanting to stay still until Bane finishes. He clenches the ratty blanket and winces when the cool steel of Bane’s mask is on the back of his neck. He feels the hot breath through the mask and shivers when Bane’s left hand slides up his side and pinches his left nipple. The fingers circle the nipple, rubbing back and forth once it is erect. John swallows a gasp when Bane thrusts deep and takes his right nipple in his other hand; he pinches and swirls his fingers on both and it feels absolutely fantastic. Bane thrusts deep again, but doesn’t move, just stays there, keeping John full of his cock as he pleasures the man.   
  
“Bane...,” John finds himself whimpering when the man quickly flicks both nipples with his fingers, causing John to arch his back and push against the cock inside him. He’s overwhelmed with desire, so much so that he’s rocking his hips against Bane, no longer just laying there, waiting for the other man’s move. John pushes himself up onto his hands and knees, reaching under himself to jerk his own hardened dick.   
  
Bane snatches the hand away and continues to tease the sensitive flesh of his nipples, causing John to groan in frustration. The young officer tries again to take his cock in hand, but Bane grabs him by the wrists painfully, worrying the still tender flesh.   
  
“You’ll pleasure yourself, only when I give permission,” Bane says against his burning neck, squeezing his wrists.  
  
John hisses at the pain, clenching his eyes and his hole, which Bane stiffens his own cock in response. John’s eyes fly open when he feels it inside of him harden and pulse. Again, he’s stuck in flux, not knowing if he should feel hate, disgust, or lust.   
  
“Do you understand?” Bane says, squeezing harder on the tender wrists.   
  
John screams at the pain and pushes out a, “Yes! Yes! I got it!”   
Bane pauses a moment, seemingly to enjoy John’s submission, and then pushes John back into the mattress, grabbing both wrists and holding them down into the bed above John’s head. The cop lays his head down and gasps when Bane’s moving again, torturously filling him to the hilt.   
  
John can feel Bane’s bulky, sweaty body against his own, secretly reeling in the hardness of the muscles there. He arches his back to make contact and Bane catches the hint and flushes his chest against the smaller man. The masked man continues his onslaught, destroying John completely with even and precise thrusts. It’s not long until Bane’s once again wildly claiming him, pounding until he reaches his sweet finish, releasing his seed into John with hot, slow spurts, warming him from inside. He slides out with slick ease, opening John’s buttocks to marvel at the white fluid oozing out of the gaping hole, red from his abuse.   
  
Bane pushes off of him and leaves John naked and used on the bed. The cop doesn’t move from his place however, just waits for Bane to return. Once he does, he takes a warm wet cloth to the young man’s hole, sticking two fingers in to scoop his seed out. The pain stings like razors and John hisses.   
  
“It looks like I’ve ripped you,” Bane says, his tone surprisingly apologetic, but John doesn’t dare think he’s even remotely sorry for it.   
  
“It’s okay,” John whispers and even he can’t believe the words fall from his mouth. He immediately wants to take the words back, but instead remains silent as Bane continues to clean him.   
  
Bane doesn’t say anything else when he’s done. He picks John up and lays him properly on the bed and shuts the light off before laying next to him. The silence is strange and awkward. John doesn’t know if there should be something said between them, or if he should start asking when Bane’s going to let him go. He’s not sure at all what to do and sleep definitely isn’t an option, not after what’s happened, not while his mind works a mile a minute.   
  
But then suddenly Bane’s arms are around him, pulling him into an embrace. John lays there awkwardly with his head on Bane’s hot chest, listening to the wheezing breath, and the soft airy sound of the mask pumping painkillers into the man’s nose and mouth. Bane’s hand caress John’s shoulder and for the first time the cop realizes that the other man is indeed capable of kindness and showing affection. He doesn’t come to the realization without also remembering the horrible things the man is capable of, nor does it give him any pleasure to know that he’s sleeping with the enemy -- sleeping with a cop killer and criminal. That fact alone makes him want to run away and go vomit or just stand in a corner and scream, but instead of doing all of that, he wraps his arm around Bane’s thick torso and nuzzles against the man’s chest, listening to his thumping heartbeat.   
  
John settles into the warm embrace and his eyelids finally flutter to a close and he gets the best night’s rest he’s had in days.   
  
  
  
  
  
  


 


	2. Chapter 2

John is awakened by a horrible panic that wrestles his heart into a boxing match with his chest. He’d seen him die... he’d seen the commissioner die. It seemed so terribly real in his dream; he’d just stood there and watched Bane smash his masked face against Gordon, leaving him a broken mess of blood and bone, dumping his body into the sewer water stream. John had watched his body float away like a toy boat until it dipped down into darkness.   
  
He’s in Bane’s bed still, but alone and handcuffed once again, but this time to the head of the steel framed bed. In his thick sweat his eyes dart around the lair, looking for any sign of Bane or his lackeys. John can’t see them, but he knows they’re out there somewhere, watching him with hawkeyes, ready to stop him at the first sign of escape. He steadies himself for a moment to come down from the panic, evening out his breathing.   
  
It was just a dream.  
  
He says it over and over in his head until he feels okay enough to stop thinking about it. Even though it hadn’t been real, the guilt sits atop of him like a big hairy gorilla, reminding him that he’d been fucked by Bane last night and actually _liked_ it. His stomach twists in pain from the nasty self reproach and he turns his head inward to the pillow, burying it until the shame is manageable.   
  
Under the scratchy grey blanket he lays naked and warm, surprisingly a lot more comfortable than he could ever have ever imagined being down here after being locked away for days in a cold, dark corner. He doesn’t sink into this coziness too long; this is an opportunity to run. He scans his surroundings, his eyes falling upon the series of flat computer monitors hanging above a desk. He peers at the screens, squinting so that he may be able to read their contents, but alas the text is too tiny. His eyes move on to the metal chair that Bane must use quite often as the seat has a deep dip in it.  
  
John shifts closer to the edge of the bed with his hips so that he may be able to see closer. On top of the desk there are a few nicknacks that he has no knowledge of. There is however a slender six inch knife that almost makes him gasp. He could make a potential escape with that, if he plays his cards right. He could sneak up on someone and then disarm them for their gun. Yes, that could work; he’s had the training and even though he’s a rookie, he can throw down when he needs to. But first, there’s the handcuffs to get out of. He continues to gaze upon the items on the desk until he hears Bane’s familiar voice coming from beyond his line of vision. The young officer shifts over and tries his damned hardest to seem casual.   
  
Bane and another man come into eye range and John looks immediately to Bane who continues to speak to his henchman, but without looking away from John once his eyes are on him.   
  
“That would be all, Barsad,” Bane says, slowly stripping off his jacket. The other man nods, glancing over in John’s direction only for a second before leaving them.   
  
John hates the shiver of absolute wanting that he feels when Bane cockily walks over to his computer desk, draping his jacket over the silver chair there and then placing a brown folder on the desk. John’s curiosity is almost as thick as his wanton lust. What had Bane been talking about just now with Barsad? What’s in that folder? He has to know, but he knows there’s no way to do it now.   
  
He thinks of his years in the academy, thinks of what he’s fought for and continues to fight for. Justice and all that jazz. He can’t be attracted to a man that may have killed Commissioner Gordon! Just the idea of it makes him want to puke and pray for an early death, but he can’t even fully commit to that feeling. He wants Bane. He doesn’t realize how bad he wants him until Bane is ripping the blanket away and his skin goes cold and prickly with goosebumps. He doesn’t realize how bad he wants Bane’s touch until the man’s rough hands are feeling, prodding, and stimulating all the areas John never knew he had.   
  
John absently wonders when the attraction started. Perhaps it had begun the second he was captured. The young officer always knew he had a strange, unexplainable attraction to freaks and creatures like Bane. But it’s always been a fantasy he rather not see fulfilled. Perhaps John feels himself getting harder by the minute because of the danger -- Bane could kill him at any moment, and certainly when he’s used John up enough to satisfy his cravings for an open, wet hole to fill, he probably will kill him.   
  
The thought alone makes John Blake moan slightly. He’s a fucking freak too; creature of the night and whatnot; maybe he’s always been one.   
  
It takes only moments for Bane to get John squirming under his touch, so obvious in the way the young man’s hips roll and thrust in the air that he wants it. The officer hates himself when he’s spitting into Bane’s hand again, and hates himself even more when he lets out a high pitched cry when Bane’s fingers are inside his still tender hole, once again opening him wide. He pushes the thought of Gordon away, not wanting the kind of sick feeling it brings him. He just wants to sink in the pleasure that Bane affords him, moving his fingers slowly inside him, searching and exploring until he reaches the prostate and rubs two hard fingers at it -- softly at first, but then harder and more insistent later.   
  
Bane’s left hand is on the officer’s nipples, alternating between the two lumps, pinching and swirling the tips of his fingers on them. The larger man gazes down at him, his eyes scanning the taut muscle of John’s chest, stopping over the black patches of hair on the younger man’s under arms. He neglects the nipples for a moment to gently tweed his digits into the cop’s armpit hair, brushing the strands with the back of his fingers. John flinches at the touch, twisting away, and Bane laughs for the first time.   
  
“Sensitive?” Bane asks, moving his fingers back to stimulating the young man’s nipples.   
  
John nods, biting his bottom lip and squeezing his eyes shut when Bane’s fucking him with fingers from his right hand, his eyes on him, watching as John’s pretty mouth eventually falls open and those sweet moans escape. John opens his eyes and stares as Bane adds another finger, and then another. Down below, he notices the lump in the bigger man’s jeans, reeling in the image, making him even more so lost in the moment.   
  
“Take off your pants,” John blurts out, going red at how demanding his tone sounds. He eyes Bane, searching for something in those green eyes, but not finding much else than lust.   
  
But Bane stills himself, not moving a single inch until he rips his fingers from John’s hole, leaving him empty feeling. Those same fingers are around John’s neck, not choking him, but firm and scary.   
  
“I... I give the orders, Mr. Blake,” Bane says, his voice heavy and hot against the mask.   
  
John nods, shifting a bit to relax his aching, outstretched arms. He winces at the pain the handcuffs cause, but is able to ignore it once the pain of four fingers breaching his entrance replaces it. The pain transforms into sweet, hot pleasure that dulls John’s mind into forgetting about the Commissioner for even just a moment.   
  
But alas, John pauses, still unable to shake the dream away. He grabs at the headboard of the bed with his achy hands and pulls his body forward, away from Bane.   
  
“Wait,” John pleads, his doe eyes looking up into Bane’s hard ones. Surprisingly Bane stalls, at least to entertain himself. John’s so surprised that Bane hasn’t immediately attempted to reclaim his dominance that he doesn’t say anything at first, in fact he’s forgotten what he means to say.   
  
Bane raises his eyebrows slightly, borderline amused at John’s actions. “What is it Officer Blake?”   
  
It suddenly comes back. “Is Commissioner Gordon dead?” John huffs out.   
  
Bane’s eyes immediately go icy and then his hand slides up John’s flat chest, settling on the man’s slender neck, wrapping his wide hand around it. “He’s quite alive, but for how much longer, I cannot say.”   
  
Semi-relieved, but still worried, John lets out a sigh, pushing on, “Will you ever let me go? Will you kill me?”   
  
Something seems to flash in Bane’s eyes, something emotional. But before John can read into it, Bane has him flipped over on his stomach, his wrists on fire from twisting against the handcuffs. John cries out in pain when Bane’s fingers are in him once more, this time harder and unfeeling. The bigger man forces John up on his knees. When John collapses, he yanks him up again and slams his head into the mattress, pressing down hard until John stops squirming. The cop groans in agony, squeezing his eyes shut until tears come.   
  
Bane pistons the four fingers in, working him open. He cups his left hand, sliding it under Blake’s chin. John spits into the hand for his own sake and then Bane applies more to his entrance, creating a slicker glide of his four fingers. Bane pushes the digits apart, opening John wider and sending the man into a whimpering mess.   
  
John imagines how weak he must look and actually hopes that he dies down here so that no one could ever find out. Even in this abuse, even with him crying out in protest, some animal inside him actually loves it. He can’t believe it and hates himself for it.   
  
The larger man sighs in absolute lust when John is clenching against his fingers, feeling the sweet, warm clamping. He wills the young cop’s legs open until his knees are as far apart as possible. Bane pushes the officer’s back to arch so that his ass sits higher up, ready to be mounted. He spreads the buttocks apart and just marvels at the red, pinkness of John’s hole, wanting ever so much more to fuck him into pieces from the sight.   
  
“You’re quite... delectable like this,” Bane strains, his wheezy breathing more rushed and insistent.   
  
John says nothing, just waits as Bane unclothes himself. His body shakes in horrible anticipation. He wants it, but doesn’t. He hates the pain, but loves the pleasure. John’s too afraid to have a sit down with himself, so instead he pretends and ignores the ugly beast in him that scares himself. Blake holds his breath when the mattress dips under Bane’s weight, and when the other man’s prick is penetrating him, spreading open his hole with scorchingly hot and wet ease, John actually moans and thinks ‘fuck... that actually feels amazing.’ But of course the guilt is there, and so is the commissioner, and the shame. Bane manages to fuck those things out of him though.   
  
Bane breathes harshly through his mask and slams his hips against John, creating a thick slapping sound. Hearing it makes the younger man uneasy, wondering if the others can hear it as well. He turns his head as best as he can, wincing when Bane places both his hands on his hips, clawing into the flesh there until he’s cut with the man’s nails. John looks out and there are several men in the lair, many of them hiding behind pillars, others higher up in balconies, rubbing their groins and staring down at Bane’s complete and utter ownage of John’s body.   
  
John means to tell Bane, but the man is down to the hilt and he’s so deep and submerged that John has to open his mouth to a soundless scream. Bane’s atop him, so deep rooted into him that John can feel him at the end of his anus. That’s as deep as anyone could go, and what Bane does next makes John bite his lip until it’s red and coppery with the taste of blood. Bane rotates his hips and the younger man feels the hard cock inside of him move like the joystick of a gamepad, and it’s so painful, but so delicious, so fucking hot, so... _everything_ that John finds himself crying out and coming in long, thick globs on top of the blanket. He squeezes his hole for dear life and Bane actually moans. It’s the first time John’s heard him so vulnerable. He snatches the cop up, yanking at him until the handcuffs pull his arms long and straight. Bane is flush against his back with his arms wrapped around his stomach.   
  
“Are you ready for me, Mr. Blake?” Bane asks, his mask sinking into the crook of John’s neck. He feels the hot breath against him and finds himself moaning in pleasure, which is answer enough for Bane to fuck him wildly.   
  
But wildly doesn’t quite suffice. He’d fucked John last night with vigor, but today seems like Bane is in absolute need. Bane tightens his arms around the skinny man’s stomach and John feels as though he can no longer breathe. The larger man is grunting into his neck, thrusting relentlessly into him, filling him up to the hilt, then sliding back until just the tip is submerged, then slamming back in, making John shudder.   
  
He fucks John like a piece of meat, using his hole like sex toy, nowhere near being kind and gentle. John braces himself, squeezing at the head board’s metal bar with a white knuckled grip. He screams as Bane fucks him quickly, never seeming to slow down. He feels as if he’s going to die; it’s like he’s being turned inside out. He can almost physically feel his hole being plunged out, used and red with Bane’s prick destroying it with cold unfeeling sex.   
  
John can’t believe it, but he begins to feel the onset of an orgasm, and as he’s trying to warn Bane, it’s already too late; he’s coming and slinging strings of come all over the bed in small white droplets.   
  
Bane presses his mask against John’s ear and says something, but it’s garbled and strange. Not even a second later he’s emptying himself into John in hard, prolonged thrusts, filling him with warmth. John feels every spurt, every pulse that Bane’s cock has. The masked man presses his face into John’s soft neck. It’s painful and uncomfortable, but it’s the closest thing to a show of affection that John can imagine Bane giving.   
  
Bane slips out and presses John into the mattress, but not before grabbing the blanket and cleaning his dick off. He clothes himself and leaves John laying there, used and wet with Bane’s come inside him. Last time the man had cleaned him, but it seems as though there’s no time for that, or perhaps he doesn’t care enough to do it. Either way, it makes John feel shitty. He feels too full and way too slippery, so he pushes the semen out and shivers when Bane’s come drips down over his own ball sack. He feels dirty, and sticky, but sated. He falls asleep before anything like shame or guilt can come to haunt him.   
  
/  
  
Bane never returns that day, and strangely John feels worried and alone. His hole still feels sore, but it also feels extremely open and ready for another pounding and the way the pain throbs around his entrance makes him shiver with lust. He grinds against the mattress until completion. He sits in his own filth and thinks about how Bane’s seed still sits inside him even now. It’s enough to get himself back to sleep after he grinds a few more times to come.   
  
He awakes hours later, being unhandcuffed by Bane.   
  
“Bane,” John finds himself mumbling for no reason.   
  
“It’s time to shower,” Bane says simply, pulling John from the bed into his arms. He cradles the grown man like a child and carries him into the shower room before plopping John on his wobbly legs. Bane unclothes himself and turns on the water. It’s cold and terrible, but John’s been dying for a shower.   
  
Bane doesn’t allow John to make a single movement. He washes John roughly, but making sure he’s clean in all areas. He sticks a soapy finger inside John and feels around, easing out any old remnants of his semen in there before rinsing and fingering in bits of water. Once John is clean, the water is hotter and Bane begins to bathe himself. His arms are huge and bulging and to John’s great shame, they are sexy under the now steamy, hot water. The muscles are even sexier under soap suds. John can’t help but reach out and touch, his eyes trained on Bane. The bigger man doesn’t quite object, but he pulls John close and bends him over, fucking him in the shower until John is left on the wet floor on his hands and knees, waiting for Bane to finish cleaning himself.   
  
Bane does a quick, cursory clean up of John’s ass once again and lets the officer walk back this time to the bed. Bane dries him with a huge, grimy white towel that smells a bit mildewed. Once they’re both dry, they climb in the bed. John waits for Bane to handcuff him, but he doesn’t. Bane doesn’t say anything to him, but grabs a water damaged book with no cover and reads in silence as John just lays there next to him. There’s a burning desire to snuggle against Bane’s bicep, but he doesn’t do any such thing. After thirty minutes or so, John is incredibly bored, so he dares to ask Bane what he’s reading. The man doesn’t answer or acknowledge him.   
  
“Well, can I have something to read too?” John tries, turning on his side to face Bane.   
  
Those green eyes remove themselves from the book and eye John with curiosity. He tucks a finger in his book and leans over, pulling out a red milk crate full of books from under the bed. “Have at it,” Bane says, going back to his own reading.   
  
John tentatively exits the bed, scared that Bane will snap and toss him back onto the mattress and hatefuck him like he tends to do, but the other man pays him no attention. He walks up near the desk and his eyes fall on the brown folder. His curiosity itches like mad, but he has more sense than to try and figure out anything with Bane lying wide awake right there, so he stoops over and shifts through the pile of books. There’s tons of books with no covers and ones with them look like they’re on their last legs. There’s a beat up copy of The Great Gatsby that makes him sick with boredom, so he settles on the next coverless volume that his hand picks and decides not to look into it until he’s back in bed. It so happens he’s stuck with Atlus Shrugged. In ten minutes he’s asleep again.   
  
Some time later he wakes up with Bane’s fingers already inside him. There’s no foreplay, or preamble. Bane fucks him hard and deep and then it’s over faster than it usually is. The lights go out and John lays awake with only his thoughts and Bane’s snores.   
  
Even with the entire time to himself and his thoughts, he doesn’t realize he actually hadn’t tried to escape until Bane is awake and getting up from bed. He’d spent the entire night thinking of Bane. John hadn’t even considered that it would have been the perfect time to escape with him asleep and the lights out. He suddenly sees how comfortable he’s gotten and it scares him.  
  
Tomorrow, he would leave this place and escape Bane’s claws before they get any deeper. This is not the John Blake he knows.   



	3. Chapter 3

Being Bane’s hostage has become too normal, John fears. He’s gotten used to the prepared meals, the waiting, the fucking and then waiting to get fucked again. His lack of control has become more rewarding than he reckon it should, so that’s when he decides to finally get away.   
  
He doesn’t have a well thought out plan to say the least, but he has enough panic and desperation in him to follow through with the haphazard attempt he has in mind. He waits until Bane is gone of course. There’s no way he could do anything with the man watching him. These past few days Bane hasn’t handcuffed him for one reason or another. Maybe John has gained his trust, or perhaps Bane just feels cocky enough to leave John there, knowing he won’t make a run for it. Either way, John likes to think it’s a mistake on Bane’s part.   
  
The knife that John’s been eyeing recently is still there on the desk, but the mysterious brown folder is in a drawer. He’d watched Bane open it and thumb through before placing it back. He doesn’t know if drawer is locked or not, but he knows that he has to act quickly if he wants to escape with a bit of information. He sits in the bed, pretending to casually read his copy of Atlas Shrugged until the lair is completely deserted. Once the last lackey has disappeared somewhere in the darkness, he bolts up from the bed and snatches the knife up. John’s not been given clothes since Bane removed them days ago, so the first thing he does when he’s got the knife in hand is cut a piece of the blanket, long enough to wrap around his waist like a bath towel. It ends up looking more like a skirt, but John doesn’t have any concerns for that sort of thing right now.  
  
The young policeman’s heart is pounding in his chest as he glances back into his surroundings, but doesn’t see anyone yet. He figures he has only seconds to make this work. Breathlessly, John grabs at the drawer and it opens with a soft swoosh. The folder is the first thing he sees; with deft fingers he lifts it from its resting place and opens it. He scans the contents as quickly as he can. None of it makes much sense, just a spreadsheet with numbers with a lot of zeros and commas, but there’s two transparent slides of fingerprints in the folder as well. Who they belong to, he doesn’t know. He shifts a few sheets of paper around, hastily reading as much as he can.  
  
The recognizable sound of Bane’s voice hums in the background, freezing John in fear. But this time, he doesn’t let the fear reign over him. He continues reading for a moment longer before thrusting the folder back into the drawer, closing said drawer softly before jumping into the bed and sliding his knife under the mattress. He’d not known exactly what he read, but he recognized the GCSE logo and knew it to be the Gotham City Stock Exchange. John hadn’t expected Bane back so soon, but nonetheless he will escape this day. The only thing he can do now is wait for the right opportunity to run.   
  
When Bane arrives with Barsad, mischief is written all over John’s face, even though he tries to fog it all with him appearing casual. Bane’s eyes train down toward the shredded blanket around John’s lower half. The man’s eyes go weary as he sends Barsad orders, his gaze moving up John’s body slowly.  
  
When Barsad leaves, Bane moves to his computer, dumping a handgun and a walkie talkie on the desk. He removes his jacket and drapes it over his chair before sitting in it. He starts typing things into the boxes on the screen and then he’s working in DOS. John hasn’t a clue to what he’s doing, but he has the right mind to think it has something to do with those fingerprints and that stock exchange information. He’s sick with guilt, knowing in his heart that he’s allowed himself to stay down here with this criminal, but right now he has the chance to get out, and it has to be now, even if it ends violently.  
  
“Bane,” John bravely says, turning on his side.  
  
“What is it Mr. Blake?” Bane asks without looking away from the computer screen, his tone clipped.   
  
John swallows nervously, “Are you going to fuck me?”   
  
Bane pauses, looking over to nonchalantly say, “In a moment, yes.” For some reason the tone hurts John’s feelings.  
  
Slowly, John turns onto his belly, rolling his hips and propping his ass in the air. Already he’s getting hard; he grinds himself into the mattress, causing a sweet friction that only gets him harder.   
  
“Can you fuck me  _now_?” John’s voice is an octave higher than normal and his bottom lip is under his teeth as he gazes at Bane with a mixture of faux and downright undeniably real lust. Even when John intends to fake arousal he somehow gets turned out with the larger man around.   
  
Bane pauses, turning to John and eying him like he’d just seen a Do-do walk into the room. “What game are you playing at?”  
  
John shakes his head, grinding his hips and moaning, “No games. I really want you to fuck me, right now.”   
  
Bane raises his eyebrows, nodding slightly before returning his gaze back to the computer screen. He doesn’t say anything, but from John’s view, he can see the other man’s erection tenting inself. Bane idly rubs at it before returning his hand to the keyboard.   
  
John decides to push further. “Please, Bane. I need it. I need your cock in me....”   
  
Bane turns to him again, his eyes hooded. John can hear the man’s breathing become labored and knows that he’s getting to him.   
  
“I’ve work to do, Blake. In a moment,” Bane says, his voice shaky and for the first time ever, vulnerable.   
  
John moans, curling his left arm and laying his head there before reaching under with his right to fondle his ball sack. His eyes stay trained on Bane who has since looked away from him. He arches his back and moves his hand up to his entrance, laying two fingers over the puckering hole.   
  
“Please, Bane,” John pleads and it sounds as if he might cry. Bane doesn’t look back at him, just continues to type in commands to the computer, thought John can tell he’s hitting the backspace button more often than the other keys. He presses a dry finger against his hole and pushes in, sliding into himself a bit easier than usual. He’s become loose from Bane’s constant occupancy. John coos when the finger falls in and he feels the smooth, soft insides.   
  
“Mmm. It’s so warm, Bane -- and so tight. I see now why you always want to fuck me,” John says torridly, his voice low and husky.   
  
Bane’s adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows hard, but he doesn’t look back at the young officer.   
  
“Bane,” John calls out, moaning when he dips his own finger deeper. “Bane, please, look at me.”   
  
The large man huffs out, sneaking a glance at John. His eyes settle on the man’s ass before returning back to the screen. “Officer Blake. You will stop what you’re doing at once and I will fuck you once my work is done.”  
  
John grins. Bane’s tone didn’t sound remotely threatening. He’s definitely getting to him.   
  
“What are you going to do if I don’t stop?” John says, removing his finger and shifting until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed and his feet are on the cold floor. “Will you kill me? Or will you fuck me one last time and then kill me?”   
  
Bane doesn’t respond, so John stands up, his make-shift skirt made from the ruined blanket tight against his thighs. “Go back to the bed, Officer Blake,” Bane commands, but John doesn’t listen, he just continues forward until Bane is glaring at him and has one of his skinny legs in a painful grip. John cries out and grabs at Bane’s tense forearm.   
  
“Bane, you’re hurting me,” John says, on the brink of whining.   
  
Surprisingly, Bane’s eyes soften as does his grip. Green eyes travel up John’s slender body, stopping at the young man’s face, scanning the stubble that has begun to grow there. Bane’s touch becomes even softer and almost ghost like as he moves his hands up John’s leg, widening his own legs as he sits in his chair. John still holds onto Bane’s forearm with his left hand, squeezing at the hard muscle there. He sets his other hand on the desk to steady himself and he moves closer until he’s almost flush against the other man, Bane’s knee between John’s legs. The officer is tempted to take the flirtation further by sitting on his knee, but decides against it. Bane’s face is at his stomach, soaking in the thin, but fit body, his eyes settling on the abs there that flex as the beefy man’s thick fingers glide up under the skirt-like cloth on John’s hips.   
  
“Why did you do this to our blanket?” Bane asks softly as his hand steadily rises until it’s resting on a firm buttock.  
  
“It’s _our_  blanket now?” John blurts out, breathless from Bane’s touch.   
  
Bane’s eyes go dark and he swiftly stands up from his chair and lifts John in the air. The cop’s eyes dart over to the gun on the desk before coming back to meet the other man. He wraps his legs around Bane’s thick torso and places both hands on his broad shoulders.   
  
“So now you’re going to angrily fuck me, is that right? You get mad at me when I act defiant and then you fuck me into submission until there’s nothing left but tears and your come inside me. Is that all I am to you? Something to dump your semen in?”   
  
Bane stills himself, swallowing. His eyes seem to wander inside John, looking deep into him. John feels caught off guard by his expression and a terrible ache cascades over him. Could he really do this?  
  
“No...,” Bane says, sounding like there’s more to say, but he can’t find the words or the courage to say more.   
  
John pauses, watching the internal struggle in Bane’s eyes, and then brings both his hands to the man’s mask, feeling the hard metal there and ghosting his fingers over the tubing. He leans in and presses his lips to the speakerbox where Bane talks through and he kisses him. John feels the man’s hot breath against his lips and it smells metallic and sterile. John gazes into his eyes and feels sick. This is a human being, a living thing. He’s not just some monster, he’s actually someone with an experience and a life. He eyes the handgun on the desk behind them again, and swallows.   
  
Suddenly Bane’s got him on the bed and is stripping his own clothes off. John’s never seen him so eager right before. John sets up on the mattress on his knees and unbuckles the man’s belt as Bane removes his own shirt, the thick muscles smooth and delicious as the black fabric peels off. John finds himself wanting to lick every inch, but he continues with the belt and then unzips him. Bane’s manhood is pressed against his white underwear, wet at the tip from his pre-come. John looks up at Bane once before moving forward to press his mouth on the wet spot. He licks at the fabric and tastes the bit of come there and also tastes some of Bane’s sweat from the day. It drives John insane. He yanks down the underwear over Bane’s broad thighs and the man’s musk attacks him full force. Bane’s pubic hair is bushy and dark blond, almost brown. John presses his face in and devours the scent. He distantly feels Bane’s hand on his head, but the hand doesn’t force him in any way, so he ignores it and takes Bane into his mouth, tonguing at the foreskin. His tongue slides underneath the sheath and caresses the smooth head of the larger man’s cock. John feels Bane sigh and so he continues. His mouth is wet and hot against the cock, so he draws on it harder to make his mouth tight. Anything to simulate what his ass must feel like.   
  
John leans off the edge of the bed to suck on Bane’s balls. He places one hand on the dirty floor below to balance himself, and uses the other to stroke the man’s dick. His eyes dart over to the gun on the desk once again, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand high on end. He stops sucking on Bane’s balls long enough to shove the man’s cock back in his mouth. Bane breathes out heavily and sinks further, filling John’s throat properly. He palms either side of John’s head, covering his ears, and then pushes forward until his manhood slides down the man’s throat. John winces, but Bane’s cock fits somehow. The young man squeezes his eyes and holds back the vomit when he’s gagging. Bane offers him some air for a moment, but it’s only a short one. John is panting hard and gasping before the other man’s thick cock is back in his mouth. Bane pushes and pulls John’s head off his dick like a fuck toy, but he at least looks in John’s watery eyes, looking down at the lips that have turned rosy red around his cock.   
  
“You’re so beautiful like this,” Bane says, stopping to let John cough and gasp for air. The masked man’s cock is covered in saliva, strands of it dripping off and plopping on the concrete ground below.   
  
“Like how,” John says, gasping for air.   
  
Bane slowly reaches down and wipes away the saliva that has collected on the edges of John’s lips with the pad of his thumb. Bane’s eyes almost seem to smile.   
  
“You’re most beautiful with my cock in your mouth and tears in your eyes,” Bane explains, moving two fingers inside John’s mouth. The cop hungrily suckles at them, the taste salty and almost unpleasant. Then there are more fingers pulling his mouth open and Bane’s cock is inside his mouth again. Bane holds the edges of John’s mouth and pulls his lips apart as he thrusts into the wet cavern. He does this for some time until John’s breathless and on the edge of vomiting.   
  
Tired, but steady, John pushes up off the ground with his left arm, shifting his knees further from the edge of the bed so that he’s completely on the mattress now. The young man takes Bane’s cock into his mouth once again and Bane moves closer, pushing his cock deeper. He bends over and pushes the makeshift skirt up John’s hips, bunching it up until the cop’s ass is in full view. He caresses the round flesh and places a few fingers down his crack. John moves away, saying bravely, “Wait.” It’s more of a command than a plea, but strangely Bane doesn’t react like he normally does, which usually includes John being slammed into the mattress and fucked until he can’t sit straight anymore.   
  
Bane indeed waits, his arms seeming strange the way they bulge on either side of him. John moves off of the bed and his arms are on the man’s muscles, touching and feeling until he’s behind Bane. There’s a long scar that runs itself from the back of Bane’s head and all the way down his spine, ending at the waist. John trails two fingers there and observes the old injury.   
  
“What happened here,” John whispers, his lips on the scar tissue.   
  
“An old story you’d not be interested in,” Bane replies, his voice uncharacteristically soft. John’s heart clenches and it’s a small bittersweet victory.   
  
Bane’s come to trust him.   
  
“Tell me,” John murmurs, placing soft, almost nonexistent kisses along the scar, moving down until he’s on his knees.   
  
“Maybe some other time,” Bane offers.   
  
‘There won’t be another time,’ John thinks before placing his hand on the small of Bane’s back. He yanks at Bane’s trousers and underwear until they have pooled around the man’s ankles. “On the bed, and bend over, I want to do something for you.”   
  
Bane turns his bald head, his eyes searching John’s for a moment before deciding to listen to him. He falls onto the mattress on his knees with a loud creaking sound, the coils crying out under his weight. John moves a hand up his back, tracing the scar. He moves closer and begins kissing the other man’s ass, biting it slightly before moving both his hands to the firm buttocks to pull them apart revealing a tight, pink ring of muscle dusted with dark blond hair. John wets his lips and goes in, covering the hole with his mouth and tasting all of Bane. The sweat, the musk and Bane’s animal-like grunts almost make John forget what he’s planning to do, but he stays focused and pleasures Bane like this for some time, swirling his tongue on the puckering hole, teasing it open.   
  
Bane’s ass stays tight and tense, but John nonetheless pushes his wet tongue against it, attempting to worm himself into Bane. The large man is huffing like he’s running and the sound is alarming against his mask. John continues to taste him, hooking one hand under to take Bane’s cock in his hand. He strokes it as he eats his ass out, his mind racing for what he’s about to do.   
  
His mind goes white when he rips away from Bane and dives after the handgun, swirling around to face the man that has imprisoned him. Bane cranes his head around, seeing his own pistol being pointed at him. John thinks that his eyes ought to go from being hooded and lust stricken to something more terrified or angry, but Bane is still visibly turned on. John thinks that he may even be _more_  turned on by the fact that he’s at gunpoint.   
  
“What are you going to do with that?” Bane asks and it almost sounds like a genuine question, but there’s a subtle hint of mockery there that makes John cock the gun, if only to make sure Bane knows he’s serious.   
  
“I need to leave. I can’t stay down here any longer with you,” John says, his voice shaky and unsure sounding.   
  
Bane turns his body around until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, his arms crossed. “How long have you been down here, Officer Blake?”  
  
Slightly confused by the question, it takes a moment for John to answer, “Too fucking long!”  
  
“Three weeks. Three weeks starting tomorrow. Don’t you find it disturbing that no one has come to your rescue by this point?”  
  
The comment hits John hard, after all, it’s something he’s thought about from time to time, but he always assumed that Bane’s foiled any plans of his rescue.   
  
“How do you know that?”  
  
“My men surround this area at all times and there have been no reports of a rescue mission. No one has attempted to come save you. You’re all alone now.”   
  
“Bullshit!” John cries out, pointing the gun towards Bane’s face.   
  
“You have reserved so much of your hope in your comrades, when really you’re just a low-level servant to the machine. Those people don’t know real justice,” Bane says, standing up and not looking in the least bit afraid of John. “I saw it in your eyes the day you came here -- that you were... different. Something dark and removed. The look of someone who’s suffered.”   
  
“You don’t know shit about me!”  
  
“On the contrary, Mr. Blake, I know all there is to know about you. Orphaned at the age of ten. Moved from foster home to foster home,” Bane says, moving closer, causing John to shrink backward towards the desk behind him. “Anger consumed you to the brink of insanity and so your only release came from assuming the role of public serviceman. Bringing the hand of justice down on Gotham’s criminals, one thug at a time.”   
  
Bane moves so close that the barrel of John’s pistol is snug against his chest, right over his heart. “That need for justice is also something I could see in you, eventually. You have an aura similar to someone else dear to me.”   
  
“And who would that be?” John dares to speak, his voice breezy and light as his grip on the handgun slightly relaxes.   
  
Bane stares at him, silent at first. “Gotham’s finest can’t offer you the release I can. They do not respect or value your life, even though you have more than proved yourself to be worthy.”  
  
John’s mad now, maybe because what Bane is saying is the truth, but he presses the gun harder against the man’s broad muscled chest, feeling the hot tears stinging at his eyes. “They respect me as a fellow police officer! We’re all brothers in the line of duty... ‘til the end.”   
  
Bane’s eyes narrow, “Then why are they not here now? Why haven’t they sent in your beloved S.W.A.T. team to rescue a lowly rookie cop?”   
  
John has no answer and it hurts. He can feel himself weaken -- can feel himself giving up on the opportunity to kill Bane, to escape, or to die with a purpose. Bane sees it too, John can tell by the knowing look in his eyes.   
  
Bane reaches forward and brushes John’s flushed cheeks with his knuckles. “We are brothers down here. Down here, your life is valued and you are important.”  
  
“Life seems pretty cheap around these parts, especially with someone like you in charge.”   
  
“Someone like _me_? Oh dear boy, you wound me!” The tone is uncharacteristically sarcastic. The mocking pushes John’s emotions back into the red zone, his finger ready to pull the trigger. “I only require obedience and common sense and loyalty. But you...  you could be by my side and bring the real justice that this wretched city deserves.”  
  
“There’s where the police come in. I won’t stand by and allow you to take matters into your own hands,” John says and even he isn’t convinced by his hollow words.  
  
“That’s the academy talking,” Bane says, his eyes hooded in intimacy. “Where is the angry boy in there that I have read so much about? When will he come out?”  
  
John opens his mouth to respond, but Bane has his wrist in a flash and John pulls the trigger, shooting the gun off at a concrete pillar. The larger man strips the cop of his weapon and then roughly throws him on the bed.   
  
The angry boy Bane spoke of finally comes out. “Not this time!” John bellows and he reaches under the mattress swiftly and draws the knife on Bane just as the other man is atop of him. The knife is snug against Bane’s throat. In one quick motion he could have the masked man bleeding everywhere. Several men come rushing in, pointing their guns at John, but Bane immediately dismisses them. “I’ve got it under control, back to your posts,” Bane says to them. They hesitantly leave the scene, but in the distance his other henchmen watch with concerned curiosity.    
  
“You expect to kill me with that?” Bane mocks him.   
  
“Yeah, I’m going to try to.”   
  
Bane’s eyes smile. “I wonder if it is sharp enough?”  
  
“I’m betting it’s sharp enough to have you bleeding like a damn pig,” John retorts, pushing the knife further against Bane’s neck. He feels in that moment he could really do it, he really could. But then, Bane’s hand is snaking it’s way up and his thumb is on John’s nipple, fanning it as his other hand is under them both, right on John’s hole.   
  
“If you really want to kill me, then do it. But remember you will never find someone else that can fuck you quite like I do.”  
  
John shudders and Bane’s finger is inside of him.   
  
“Stop!” John weakly pleads as Bane’s finger probes deeper until it’s on his prostate. Bane looks down into the young policeman’s dark eyes, watching the man’s reaction as Bane’s thick finger rubs at the lump inside, pushing on it hard.   
  
“Nghh!” John moans, thrusting his head back into the mattress below.  
  
Bane roughly adds another finger and swiftly thrusts his fingers against John’s prostate, pushing hard and relentlessly, causing John to nearly whimper in absolute lust. The knife is still against Bane’s neck, but the bigger man pays it no attention. He moves away suddenly, leaving John sore and empty and walks over to his jacket, digging in it until he finds a squeeze bottle of lube.   
  
“I was going to present this as a gift, but you have proved most difficult today,” Bane says as he lands on his knees in the bed.   
  
John still has his knife up as if to defend himself, but Bane’s back on top of him. He places the knife back where he’d held it before and waited as the other man squirts a liberal amount of lube on his fingers. Those same fingers are in him. Two at first and then a third that makes him feel insanely full and tight.   
  
“Stop!” John shouts, “Or will kill you!”   
  
Bane stills himself, sighing, “This game has been fun Mr. Blake, but I’m afraid I have grown tired of it. Nice Bane does not quite suit me.”   
  
John’s never seen a man move so quickly. The knife somehow escapes John’s hand and he’s flipped over on his stomach, thrashing violently as Bane mounts him. He resists and he screams, but the man only likes it more because he shoves his cock into John harshly and fucks the tense hole. At first it hurts like hell because honestly, John is trying his damned hardest to fight back, but soon the hole relaxes and Bane is pumping into him as easily as ever. The policeman feels like an utter failure when his breath hitches in pleasure from the bigger man’s cock hitting his prostate.   
  
John squeezes his eyes shut and takes Bane’s dick, opening his mouth only when Bane commands in. After thrusting so fast and hard into him, the masked man pulls John’s head roughly forward, forcing open his mouth. Bane comes in huge gushes, squirting it on John’s teeth and all over his lips and nose.   
  
“Keep your mouth open,” Bane commands as he pants, using his large fingers to push the excess semen into John’s mouth. A long glob of come hangs from the cop’s chin and Bane scoops it up and lowers his hand to force feed the come into John’s ass. With two fingers he pushes the semen in and finds John’s prostate again.   
  
“Swallow it,” Bane says as he's jerking his fingers inside so hard that John fears he will rip his asshole.   
  
John swallows and cries out when his dick is standing up, full of blood and then gushing come all over Bane’s bulging bicep. The man flexes the muscle, making the come roll off, rolling down to his elbow. Bane pulls his fingers from John and once again leaves him there, filthy with come covering his face.   
  
Bane is gone for hours and John just lays there with come drying on his face. It grows tight and eventually starts to flake. He doesn’t care though, as it is all fitting to where he is right now. John has once again let Bane have him and the funny thing is, the more he wants the resist, the more he loves it. He can almost come again right now from thinking about how Bane fucks him best when he’s had enough of John’s bullshit.   
  
The police officer looks over to the desk and sees the pistol is still there where Bane laid it and in his heart he feels disgusting for not even wanting to pick it up and escape.   
  
Bane’s got him bad and he just can’t help but want to stay. His fellow police officers haven’t come down to save him, nor has there even been news of the commissioner’s statements on the incident. Sure, Bane could be hiding information from him, but it just doesn’t make sense for an officer like himself to stay kidnapped underground for three weeks without a search team to come and find him.   
  
As he peels Bane’s dried come from his face he privately decides in his heart that the police have failed him and that maybe, just maybe Bane is right.


	4. Chapter 4

The cold, bitter hand of reality reaches into John’s heart one day and squeezes. He cries angrily because there’s nothing else to do to express his emotions better. They’d left him down here to rot like he’s nothing to them. John’s held the police force up on an impossibly high pedestal; this is something he’s realized for a long time but has chosen to ignore that little known fact, until now. The truth is that the police are quite corrupt. John’s heard the stories from before the Batman, back when Falcone ruled the city and madness seemed to morph into new found normalcy.  
  
John once believed those days to be of the past -- the long forgotten time. But no. Those days are still here and everything in him breaks when Bane forces him to sit up in the bed and tosses him a multi-page speech written in Commissioner Gordon’s distinct scrawl.  
  
“I protected you from this,” Bane says, sitting over in the chair in front of his computer. “But now seems like the time for the truth to have its say.”  
  
John’s face twists in confusion, “What is this?”  
  
Bane slowly blinks, cooling himself down from a flair of impatience, “Read it, and you’ll find out all there is to know about your precious system.”  
  
These past few days Bane has lectured him on the corruption running rampant in Gotham, and apparently Bane has an answer to it all, though he won’t tell John a single word of it. The other men in the lair have grown skittish and scared looking. John suspects something big is going to happen soon.  
  
John looks away from Bane and quickly reads the document in his hands. It’s only a matter of seconds that he finds his stomach doing flips and his heart is pounding, leaving him out of breath.  
  
“Where’d you get this?” John whispers, turning over the pages as if to make sure they are real.  
  
Bane stands up, facing him, wheezing for a moment before walking closer to the bed. “The commissioner had it on him when he was captured. I’ve held it secret from everyone, except now, for you, of course.”  
  
“I don’t believe it.”  
  
“Why not? Because it doesn’t appear to be something your dear commissioner would do? He is weak, like most men. Gordon, along with the Batman, have blinded Gotham in a walled garden of lies.”  
  
John shakes his head, not wanting to believe, or hear anymore. He feels sick, knowing now that the commissioner had lied to the public for eight years, blaming Batman for Harvey Dent’s crimes. No matter how much John wants to block it out, no matter how much he wants to not believe it, he knows for certain that it is the truth. He’s speculated for ages on why Batman took the fall for those crimes, but he hadn’t known for certain.  
  
It’s different, knowing for sure. He’d almost rather stay hidden in the darkness, not knowing what really happened -- not knowing that Harvey Dent had fallen from grace and killed those people. He tosses the paper away on the floor, the pages fluttering apart, landing softly.  
  
Bane sighs, bending over with a soft groan to pick the sheets of paper up from the floor. “You hide from the truth like a coward and I know for certain you’re not one.”  
  
“Why are you doing this?” John says, eying Bane with desperation for some answers for once. “Why do you keep me down here and feed me this mess?”  
  
“Because you need to see past your blind faith in humanity,” Bane says, standing up and reorganizing the paper. “You have been a fool for too long. I’m giving you the opportunity to open your eyes and see the true nature of Gotham. If you choose to stay ignorant, then I’ll fuck you until you bore me, and then I’ll kill you.”  
  
Bane leaves and the statement chills John to the core. The seriousness in the other man’s tone honestly scares him, but the young cop finds himself almost welcoming that sort of end. There’s worse ways to die. If he spends his last days being fucked senseless, then he supposes that can be a decent ending.  
  
Except, it’s not the ending he ever imagined.  
  
The next few days Bane rarely touches him, but he speaks often. It’s not always politics, or the future of humanity, but sometimes it’s about Bane’s life, some tales from when he was a child growing up. John can always tell he’s holding back details, but often times John just likes to sit and listen. The cop shamefully enjoys these chats, and he enjoys the times they shower together in silence, or when John eats and Bane sits at his computer and works. It’s enough to get him to stop thinking about everything outside _and_ inside.  
  
He loves the stories even if they are depressing, but the main one he wants to hear is why Bane has to wear his mask. He has other questions as well, like why does he have stock market information in his drawer and whose fingerprints he’s holding on to, but he keeps his mind trained on Bane’s mask. It’s a subject John’s avoided for obvious reasons. He knows it must be a sensitive issue, but he feels in his heart that Bane would probably tell him. So, he decides to say something finally.  
  
“Bane?” John asks after taking a hearty bite of his  salsbury steak. He’s been eating bland food for so long that this meal of salisbury steak, garlic mashed potatoes and broccoli today tastes like French cuisine. He’s sitting on the bed with his plate in his lap, licking the last bit of gravy from his fork while Bane sits at his computer, working.  
  
Bane turns towards him without asking anything.  
  
John swallows. “What happened to you?\-- to your face? Why do you have to wear that mask?”  
  
Bane’s eyes downcast and he turns back to the computer, his thick fingers banging away at the keyboard before eventually replying, “It is inconvenient, but necessary.”  
  
John chews on the head of broccoli he’d just dunked into his gravy and narrows his eyes. “But what happened to you?”  
  
Bane stops typing, turning to face John. “Why are you so interested?”  
  
The younger man shrugs his shoulders, thumbing the rim of his plate. “It’s mysterious. I can’t help but want to know why you need it, or how it works.”  
  
Bane’s green eyes stare into John, but they don’t stir him like they used to. The larger man returns back to his work, leaving the two of them in silence for a moment or so.  
  
“The mask... staves the pain off. Keeps it at bay so that I may function.”  
  
John waits to ask more questions; he just finishes up his last bit of broccoli and starts on his pasty mashed potatoes. “Did someone hurt you?”  
  
Bane keeps typing, not responding. John looks down at his food, and then back up to the other man. “If someone did... I’m sorry that they did that to you.”  
  
The masked man stops his work once again to turn back towards John, his eyes strangely soft. He gazes for a while before muttering, “Thank you.”  
  
/  
  
One day John is able to venture out into another section of the lair, an event he’s most grateful for. Being confined only to Bane’s bed and his milk crate of boring literature is driving him mad. Plus, he feels like he’s losing all of the muscle he’d gained, though Bane tells him that he prefers him this way. Nonetheless, it’s good to get to walk further than from the bed to the shower and back. He’s wearing clothes for the first time in ages, but the fabric actually almost feels foreign against his skin. John’s got a pair of pants that feel scratchy against his legs, something akin to potato sack fabric. The shirt he’s wearing doesn’t feel much better, but it’s softer and he’s not cold all the time now, so he welcomes this.  
  
Bane attaches a slightly worn leather collar to him that hangs loosely around his neck with a long chain attached that the large man holds with a tight grip.  
  
“What’s this for?” John asks, hooking a thumb up through the collar.  
  
“In case you attempt to run away.”  
  
“I could have escaped already, you realize.”  
  
“No, you just think you could have escaped,” Bane says, a sliver of humor in his voice and it makes John grin. These moments are odd, when the two of them joke. Even John’s entrapment is fair game these days. The young man starts to really think about why Bane keeps him around, why he insists that he join their cause, though he hasn’t really explained exactly what they are planning to do. The unbelievable part is that John has honestly begun to consider it.  
  
John tugs at the collar a bit before saying, “It’s a bit much, don’t you think?”  
  
Bane hums, amused as they walk down a dimly lit hallway, the walls around them bland and concrete grey. The air is cool and moist, but there’s a pungent odor wafting around that forces John to cover his nose.  
  
Bane notices. “The cons of living in the sewers.”  
  
They turn a corner and descend down some stairs that Bane warns John to be careful of. The stairs bleed down into another hallway that remains in complete darkness. Suddenly, John is absolutely terrified and thinks that this is where he’ll die. He stops where the light does and doesn’t move.  
  
“Where are you taking me?” John shudders, pulling at his leash. Bane yanks at the chain, pulling John down to the ground. He seemingly hadn’t meant to be so rough, because he then picks the man up, caressing his back.  
  
“Calm yourself,” Bane commands.  
  
“Are you going to kill me?”  
  
Bane pauses, wrapping the chain around his fist. “No. Now calm yourself and come.” The masked man walks forward and John swiftly grabs for the man’s arm. He hates how ‘damsel in distress’ the action makes him feel, but he swallows the embarrassment and thinks perhaps that Bane likes him acting helpless, maybe it turns him on. They enter the darkness and it’s thick and impermeable until Bane turns on a flashlight John hadn’t seen him pull out before.    
  
The light reveals a long hallway with a large steel door at the end. Once they reach said door, Bane pulls out a ring of keys and opens it, swinging it open with little effort. The larger man leads him through, revealing an open area with several corridors that are lit up with old lights attached to the walls. Several of them have burned out, leaving only a few still lit.  
  
John can hear the rats squealing and scurrying all around him. He’s damn scared, but with Bane, he knows it’ll be alright; he just follows the man into the dank passageway. They go down one of the poorly lit hallways that leads to a door with thin lines of white light peering through it. Bane unlocks this door as well and it opens with a loud creaking sound.  
  
They walk into what seems to be someone’s living quarters, complete with a small kitchenette, and refrigerator. There’s a really old hospital bed in the center with a metal over bed table that has several syringes and scalpels and other medical surgery tools that make John’s stomach flip. In the corner there’s a rusty bed with an army green blanket that looks even more raggedy than Bane and John’s old blanket (that had to be restitched, thanks to John turning it into a clothing item). In another corner there are several tan colored cabinets that line the wall, some of them with windows that John can see through. The cabinets are full with medicine and medical equipment.  
  
“Oh, Bane! You’re here!” comes an old man’s shaky voice from the other side of the room. A tall elderly man with thick bifocals and messy white hair stands up from his seat in front of his computer, scrambling over to the two of them. He has a dingy white doctor coat, a burnt orange and green flannel shirt under that and some brown, tweed trousers with a pair of really worn out black dress shoes. “Oh, so this is the companion you mentioned bringing?”  
  
“Yes, this would be him,” Bane says, gently pulling on John’s chain to ease him forward.  
  
“Welcome my dear boy! I’m Doctor William Harvey. Here, take a seat!” The old man scurries past John and fetches a rusty folding chair that he sets right next to the hospital bed.  
  
“Bane. What is this?” John asks, his voice a little shaky. He’s never been a fan of hospitals. Ever since his first decent foster mother had a stroke and he had to sit in the waiting room only to find out she’d passed away, he’s had this uneasy feeling in hospitals. This underground, makeshift patient room doesn’t make matters any better. He’s not sure what Bane is planning to do, but it’s scaring him.  
  
“I want to show you something,” Bane replies simply, raising his hand to direct him towards the chair. John complies, walking forward and sitting down.  
  
The doctor smiles, walking over to Bane who then leads them to the doctor’s computer, leaving John to his lonesome. They begin to discuss some things in private, but John can’t catch wind of it at all in the big echoey room. Instead he scans the area, looking for anything interesting. He notices an old tv sitting on top of a wood rotted coffee table next to the doctor’s bed. He wonders if he can even get a reception this deep underground, and then he ponders where they are. Before he can make any sort of conclusion, Bane is back, tugging at the collar a moment until the chain is removed. He wraps the chain around a fist and shoves it into one of his cargo pants pocket. He eyes John for a moment and then begins to unclothe himself. John’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t say anything -- he just hopes things start making sense soon. The doctor strides over to the medicine cabinets, opening them and pulling out a few IV bags full of a clear fluid. He comes back just as Bane lifts himself into the hospital bed once he’s stripped down to his underwear. Dr. William Harvey hooks the bags on the IV pole beside the bed and goes back to the cabinets, returning with some tools that look like a pair of abnormally long pliers and a power drill.  
  
John swallows, hating the terrible silence filling the room. He wants to say something, but he just opts to idly pull at the stitching at the bottom of his shirt that has come undone. Once the doctor has gone back and forth, grabbing his items, the man starts his work on Bane’s mask. He doesn’t say much of anything, which makes the entire process extremely unnerving for John as the man pulls out a drill and starts removing the screws from Bane’s mask.  
  
“Every week we do this,” Dr. Harvey says, his wrinkled face smiling over at John as he continues removing screws. “We have to clean it and switch his medication.” The doctor asks Bane to turn over and so he does and John’s eyes gravitate towards the long scar along Bane’s back. His fingers itch to touch it -- they always do, but he keeps his hands on the bit of thread that he’s been pulling at.  
  
Bane flips back over once the doctor has finished unfastening the back end of his mask and immediately looks at John as if to check up on him. John’s completely confused and wants to ask so many questions, but he waits and watches as the doctor preps the IV drip.  
  
“You look uneasy,” Bane says.  
  
John swallows and smiles weakly. “Just confused. And a little... a little nervous.”  
  
“Nervous?” the doctor cuts in, “It’s all routine. Bane will be quite alright.”  
  
John purses his lips and cups his hands as the doctor finds Bane’s vein and inserts the IV. He stops the liquid from dripping.  
  
“We have to wait until the right moment to administer the medication, lest he overdose,” Dr. Harvey says, smiling with crooked yellow teeth at John like he’s about to hand him a lollipop.  
  
John’s eyes meet Bane’s as the doctor finishes his IV prep and resumes work on the mask. The drill sound filling the room reminds John of the dentist and his skin crawls. The old man lays each screw on the over bed table on a white cloth in a certain order, presumably to remember where each one goes as they vary in length. The doctor hooks his fingers under the mask and quickly yanks it off, revealing Bane’s full face. John almost has to reach up to stop his jaw from hitting the floor. Bane... is gorgeous. He has beautiful lips that are full and plump -- exactly the kind of lips that belong on a cock, or on John’s own lips. Seeing him now makes John’s heart thump and it’s like he’s meeting him for the first time. Bane’s lips part, as if to say something, but he doesn’t speak. The moment of awe is short lived however; suddenly Bane’s eyes squeeze shut and he clenches his teeth, grabbing at the mattress as his body begins to shake, almost to the point of appearing like a seizure.  
  
“What happened?” John yells, lifting himself out of his chair.  
  
The doctor waves for him to sit back down and he begins the IV drip. Soon enough, Bane calms down and John realizes it’s the painkillers entering his system that’s settling him. It doesn’t register that he’s clenching onto Bane’s forearm until the man himself is staring down at the gesture. John snatches his hand away, nervously laughing in embarrassment at his obvious relief as he sits back down.  
  
“See, all better,” Dr. William Harvey says, smiling brightly at John and Bane as he takes the mask and its pieces away to the other side of the room where his cabinets are.  
  
John stares at Bane, who gazes back as the doctor works on the mask.  
  
“It’s like..., “John begins, damning the butterflies in his stomach, “It’s like I’m seeing you for the first time.”  
  
Bane smiles and John’s worst fears come true. He’s truly fallen for this bastard!  
  
“Am I less scary this way?” Bane asks and his voice suddenly seems less menacing without the mask muffling it.  
  
John smiles, looking down at his fingers as he shrugs his shoulders, shamelessly bashful. “It’s just... different.”  
  
Bane smiles and John’s eyes won’t tear away from the man’s lips, loving all too much how they stretch into that gorgeous smile that he never would have guessed in a million years Bane would have.  
  
The doctor returns with Bane’s mask in a box, grinning at them both. “Are the painkillers potent enough for you Bane?”  
  
The man nods, briefly looking away from John for the first time.  
  
“Very good, very good,” Dr. William Harvey says as he walks away.  
  
“Doctor,” Bane calls, “Take a lunch break. I’d like to speak with my captive in private.”  
  
The old man nods, rushing over to set the box down by his computer desk. He grabs a few things and leaves them alone. As soon as they are to themselves, Bane says raspily, “Come here.” John’s not even surprised by how quickly he obeys. “Take off your clothes.” John does.  
  
Bane slowly removes his own underwear, grunting and wincing as he does so. John tries to help, but he refuses.  
  
“Are the painkillers not strong enough?” John asks, concerned.  
  
“It is less potent than the formula used for my mask. It is just to hold me over until my mask is ready.”  
  
John nods, wishing the other man would let him help. Finally the underwear is removed, revealing Bane’s engorged cock. John feels his hole quiver and he instantly wants it in him. Bane taps on his lap with the palms of his hands and John climbs into the bed. Bane reaches up John’s body, touching him as the young man grinds against him gingerly, worried he’s going to hurt him.  
  
Bane bites his bottom lip and John’s cock stirs. The larger man’s muscles flex as he feels everywhere, his hands settling on John’s hips as he rocks them. Bane takes John’s hardening cock into his hand and starts to stroke it. Bane is purring and it’s the sexiest thing John’s ever heard.  
  
John can barely contain the awe he feels, his eyes bright and expressive as they gaze at the man’s lips. He leans in slowly and presses his mouth against Bane’s, able to taste him for the first time. John means for the kiss to be shallow at first, but Bane’s hunger for his touch is too impatient for silly foreplay; Bane deepens the kiss immediately, his tongue in John’s mouth for the first time and it feels like he’s losing his virginity all over again.  
  
“I want to suck you,” Bane says when they break the kiss, staring down at John’s erection.  
  
“Alright,” John breathes, shuffling upward until his cock is in Bane’s face. John never would have gueesed he’d be with Bane like this, without his mask and with his cock in his face. He has to look away once Bane’s pillowy lips are on the mushroom tip of his dick and those green eyes flash upward, almost making John come right there on the spot. Bane draws him in, sucking so deliciously hard that the cop has to lay a hand on the other man’s bald head to steady him.  
  
“Not so fast, I’m going to come!” John whispers harshly as he pulls up from Bane’s hot mouth.  
  
Bane is panting, his mouth open with his rosy red lips, wet and bruised, looking absolutely stunning. “Good, I want you to come!” Bane leans forward and takes John again. The cop squeezes his eyes shut as the tight, wet, heat is surrounding his dick once again. He feels Bane’s tongue swirling around the tip and the suction that the bigger man is applying is completely too much for the officer to handle.  
  
“Bane! I’m gonna... I’m gonna come,” John warns, his mouth wide open.  
  
Bane pulls back and opens his mouth as John works himself to completion with his hand. John’s head thrusts backward as he pumps his own cock, feeling that sweet pleasure working at the base of his balls and suddenly he’s overcome with orgasm, finally looking down to watch his semen ooze into Bane’s willing mouth. John moans at the way his come splatters on Bane’s luscious lips, loving when the man’s pink tongue darts out to pull in the droplets that missed the inside of his mouth.  
  
John dips down while the moment compels him to do so, and he kisses Bane full on the lips, tasting his own spunk there, secretly loving the bitter, salty taste combined with the softness of the other man’s lips. John suckles on the bottom lip before swallowing Bane’s gasp. They open mouth kiss, tonguing each other hungrily. Bane passes John’s load into his mouth and John passes the semen back into Bane’s until it’s all gone and all John can taste is Bane.  
  
The cop pulls back, spitting into his own hand to prep his ass. Bane smiles as he brings his IV needle free arm up to spit in his own hand to slick his cock with saliva. At this point, no preamble, or any foreplay is necessary; John slides down on Bane like the whore he knows he’s always been and he rides Bane.  
  
“Do not hold back, you won’t hurt me,” Bane breaths out, looking so vulnerable for the first time ever.  
  
“I won’t,” John promises, pushing up until his feet are on the mattress. He moves upward and then slams back down on Bane’s cock with a sexy clap sound that reverberates through the room. He spreads his ass open with his hands and John starts slow at first, but speeds up as Bane’s face twists in obvious, potent pleasure. He fucks Bane’s cock faster and harder, feeling his knees and thighs burn from exhaustion, but he doesn’t dare stop. Bane’s green eyes are staring into his soul and John feels for the first time ever that Bane’s inside him mind, body and soul. Bane’s hands hold on to his hips and John continues hopping on his cock, stopping only for a moment to feel Bane plunge so deep inside him.  
  
“I am going to come soon, John,” Bane pants, his voice so deep and rich without the mask.  
  
“Come, come for me,” John gasps, his eyes never leaving Bane’s.  
  
The younger man feels a few half-hearted thrusts and sees Bane wince in pain. John moves faster, his mouth open as he’s trying to catch his breath. He feels Bane grow harder and clench inside him as orgasm builds. Bane’s moaning loudly, squeezing John’s hips as he begins emptying into him. He suddenly pulls John down to him by his collar, the cop’s mouth on Bane’s collarbone.  
  
“Stay with me,” Bane whispers into John’s ear as he explodes once more into him.  
John doesn’t move or say anything for a moment, just in awe from the vulnerability Bane’s shows him. John cranes his neck upward and even though he knows he has pretty much zero say in the matter, he says in Bane’s ear, “Alright. I’ll stay.”  
  
/  
  
The next few days are certainly of the best John can recall. Bane always speaks to him and they discuss their pasts and John finally shares stories from his childhood. Sure there were some bad times, but there were plenty of great times too to share. He likes to tell the good stories because he likes to see Bane’s eyes squint in amusement. It’s a sweet slice of Bane no one else sees, because even if John can hear the laughter in Bane’s voice, whenever Barsad or any of his henchmen enter their area, he’s instantly serious and dangerous sounding.  
  
But he never treats John the same way he used to.  
  
With that said, the sex is still rough, which John doesn’t particularly mind because he likes the soreness Bane leaves behind when the larger man has finished in him. It reminds him that he belongs to Bane whenever those waves of pain spread across his hole.  
  
When Bane is fucking John they are never interrupted, but one day Barsad walks in on them and calmly says to Bane, “She’s here... and he’s not too happy.” The way Bane rips out of John, leaving him cold and alone, makes the young cop feel unsurprisingly empty. He’s come to expect the emotional sting, but these past few days Bane has been very kind to him, never leaving him like that. He swiftly covers himself with the blanket as Bane dresses himself quickly and leaves with Barsad. John wonders who this person is. They must be extremely important to Bane if a simple mentioning of their presence makes Bane leave the warmth of John’s ass before finishing off.  
  
It’s ages before Bane returns, but the man comes back different from the way he’d left.  
  
“Get up!” Bane commands almost angrily. He throws clothes at John and tells him to dress himself.  
  
“What’s going on?” John asks, overloaded with Bane’s sudden aggression.  
  
“No time to talk,” Bane replies curtly, pacing the room. “Hurry up!”  
  
John pauses, terrified by the way the man has just yelled at him. The anger in Bane’s eyes reminds him of that day when the other man had killed Miguel and suddenly John is all too aware of the monster Bane is. He’s secretly heartbroken by the memory because he’s worked so hard to forget, but quickly dresses himself anyways in silence. Bane pulls out his chain leash and attaches it to the collar.  
  
“Move!” Bane says, yanking at the chain as he strides ahead.  
  
John stumbles forward, almost falling to the ground. He feels a sob tighten his throat, but stops it, not wanting to look so weak in front of Bane or any of his lackeys. There are many men around him with guns, sitting around and chatting. They all grow silent when John enters their surroundings.  
  
“The black bag,” Bane says simply and then there’s a black sack in his hands from one of his henchmen. The large, muscular man pulls the bag over John’s head and then there are handcuffs on him. It’s now that he finally remembers that he’s indeed a captive.  
  
This was never a vacation, or an opportunity to fall in love. How he somehow allowed Bane to trick him into believing such a thing is a mystery to him. John cries, figuring that the black bag shields him from the shame of all of them seeing him weak like this.  
  
Everything seems a blur afterwards. He’s wobbly lead up some stairs, down some stairs, through some doors and then he’s in the back of a van that they ride in for some time. He’s not a clue as to where he is, or where he’s going, but he refuses to talk, not even to Bane whom he knows his right next to him. He can hear the man’s labored breathing.  
  
John recalls everything, all the small moments where he thought for sure that perhaps there was something more to Bane, something warm and fuzzy even. But he was a damn fool. He’s been an idiot this entire time and has allowed Bane to control him.  
  
But now, what’s going to happen to him? He thinks of the woman that visited and wonders if she’s had some influence on this sudden change of heart. Has it all been planned for this sort of ending from the start? John feels the van go off road and he really begins to worry.  
  
“Where are you taking me?” John decides to ask, but he receives no answer.  
  
A short moment afterwards he hears Bane shout, “Stop here!”  
  
Once the van comes to a complete stop, the door next to him comes sliding open and the cool winter air is all around him, chilling the young man. He can see daylight and distantly wonders what time it is. Bane’s hands are on him, picking his body up like a doll; then he’s outside where Bane carries him for a short distance before setting him down on his knees on the rocky ground below. Bane pulls the black sack off and the sunlight temporarily blinds John until his eyes adjust. He scans the surrounding area, not recognizing where he is. It’s an open field with very little grass, but tons of small rocks and dirt.     
  
Bane kneels down so that he and John are at eye level.  
  
“What’s going on? Where am I?” John whispers, shivering against the cold breeze that blows past as his eyes searches Bane’s.  
  
“Thirty miles from the city. There is a road up ahead. You can hitchhike your way to somewhere safe.”  
  
John looks in the direction Bane nods towards and he peers, seeing the distant blips of cars zooming by. He shakes his head, “What the hell Bane? Why are you doing this?”  
  
“It has to be this way if you want to live.”  
  
“I don’t understand! What are you going to do with me?”  
  
Bane reaches up, stoking John’s cheek with the palm of his hand gently, “I’m letting you go.”  
  
In absolute awe, John stares at the man, his mouth open, wanting to say, ‘Why?’ but he simply can’t find the words.    
  
“I was ordered to dispose of you, but I just couldn’t do that.”  
  
“Why not,” John blurts out, feeling himself finally coming undone once it’s all sinking in.  
  
Bane continues to caress John’s cheek, moving the fingers to ghost over the younger man’s thin lips. He looks up into John’s eyes and says, “Because... I think I care for you.”  
  
John laughs in disbelief, tears stinging the corners of his eyes, though he doesn’t dare cry. “You _think_ you care for me? You _think_?”  
  
Bane beams at him and John likes to think that perhaps he’s grinning behind that mask. The man leans forward, pressing the front of his mouth against John’s lips and the officer kisses the metal there. Bane mutters something that John can’t quite make out at the moment and quickly unhooks the chain from his collar and unlocks John’s handcuffs.  
  
“Never return to Gotham. Run as far away as you can,” Bane says, storming away to jump into the van. John croaks out a, “Wait!” as he watches the white van speed off in the wide open field. He stands and watches until the van is out of sight.  
  
John crosses his arms and begins walking toward the road, thinking desperately about what Bane had meant when he said for him to never return to Gotham. He also wonders what Bane had muttered against his mouth. He’s not one-hundred percent on it, but he could swear Bane had said, “No. I _love_ you.”  
  
/

John manages to bum a ride with a quiet man with big glasses who doesn’t ask him any questions. He doesn’t immediately go to the station to let everyone know that he’s back, safe and sound. Like they cared anyways. No. He goes straight home and showers. He tosses all the junk mail that’s waiting for him on the floor of his living room into the fireplace and sits in front of it, remembering everything he’d experienced down underground with Bane. As his fingers and toes warm themselves, he wraps himself in a blanket and rubs the leather of his collar, suddenly sick with heartache because there’s nothing else in the world he’d want right now more than Bane’s arms around him.  
  
He closes his eyes and he lays in front of the open fire, loving the warmth against his body. He falls asleep, remembering Bane’s soft lips and his hard muscles and the way he stared into John’s eyes when they fucked.  
  
It is Bane he dreams of, and it’s Bane he longs for. He hadn’t realized it, but he’d fallen in love with Bane too and there’s not one single moment he regrets it.  
  
He keeps the collar on to remind himself of the darkness he’ll always remain a slave to.  
  
The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song title taken from the song 'Negative Slave' by Pictureplane.
> 
> Special thanks to my good friend Ylith for seeing me through this. Thanks to everyone who has left feedback, kudos, bookmarked and all that good stuff. I never thought I could actually write Bane/John and here I am at the end of my first TDKR fic, feeling like I can accomplish anything! 
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
